What happens when you cross soccer with geography?

It is odd that while I have waited years (9 in fact) for TFC to make the MLS playoffs, on the day it finally happened I found myself (like the rest of the city) devoting my sporting attention elsewhere. While MLS’s most hapless franchise finally overcame its own history, the city of Toronto was swept up in Blue Jays fever that hasn’t really hit this level in over two decades. This itself says much about where these two sports rank in the consciousness of Torontonians, and normally I would want to be pulling (and arguing here) for the soccer team in this battle for the hearts and minds of the city, but screw it – last night was fun to watch in every way possible (unless you’re Texan).

What happened through the first six innings of the game was still a fabulous game: it was close (in fact tied after 6), two great pitching performances, home runs, and what on TV seemed a great atmosphere inside the Dome. But then the 7th inning happened and made this game a legend that will be passed down in oral histories long after the end of human civilization. The 7th inning offered agony, injustice, karma, and redemption in 53 minutes of Torontonians or any baseball fan looking for meaning in the world. If there are gods, apparently they watch baseball.

But other processes were going on in Rogers Centre that are worthy of some examination:

Why I hate video review. Before the 7th inning had even begun, the Umpire crew had resorted to video review, or at least a conference about calls multiple times. Sport is not perfect, nor is it always just, but the entry of video review into sport has served to undermine the ability of any official to do their job. The crew’s reliance on video review sewed seeds of doubt in the minds of both teams and fans long before there was any need for the use of video on an actually controversial decision. Once the fans, teams and umps see judgement as fallible, everything becomes questionable. This is why there is Papal Infallibility: if you can’t be wrong, nobody can argue with you. Oddly enough it works in most cases – there may be occasional bad games, but those then stand out so badly that the officials are not allowed to work that level again (ususally); injustices (real or perceived) then become part of the legends of the game (Hand of God anyone?). By the time Martin bounced a throw of Choo’s bat allowing Odor to score on the weirdest error in post season history, there was little authority left for Umpire to fall back on. Instead we were treated to multiple arguments from the two managers over whether the run should count or not, and that doubt also fed the fans anger when the (correct) call was made. The umpire messed up by calling the play dead when the ball bounced off Choo’s bat. He compounded his error by reversing his call. He further added to the mess by then going through the charade of consulting with video review and the Head Office before sticking to his decision. It was the right call made in the worst possible way.

Home field matters. I mean really matters. I have argued about the affective power of fans before – the ability of a large crowd to change the emotion all the way down on the field of play, but the bottom of the 7th was a more convincing case than one that I could ever make. Following the bizarre events of the Rangers at bat, the mood was by all reports hostile or even dangerous – a number of beer cans had been tossed onto the field (or worse, onto those sitting near the field). It seemed just a fraction under the potential for full scale riot (which has been seen in Canada before following painful sporting losses – looking at you Vancouver). The Jays seemed perilously close to forfeit due to crowd behaviour. Instead, the Rangers cracked and caved under that pressure – three errors in three at bats, and then a bloop over the 2nd baseman tied the game. One error can be caused by anything, but three in a row – something that has never happened in over 100 years of post season baseball – must be down to the crowd. Affect and the intensity of it in that moment matter.

How do we read aggression in sports? Whoa. How race, masculinity and class intersect was on full display through that inning. The edge of hooliganism provides a fascinating look at what is considered acceptable behaviour and by whom. The beer tossing as an act of aggression and the woman who sheltered her baby from the flying beer (baby was hit by beer not beer can) provided the media with a wonderful narrative about masculine aggression in that moment as a helpless woman cowers to protect her child. As much as the Toronto prides itself on being a multicultural city, it seems pretty clear from the TV that the typical Jays audience (and perhaps moreso in the playoffs) skews white. Would there have been such tolerance for the beer throwing at a Raptors game – which has a much more diverse crowd? While there were arrests for a whole series of incidents, they were for mischief, not anything worse (thankfully). Through the whole inning my twitter feed was jammed with tweets of “Stay classy Toronto” and that is just the point – class. Those with class would not behave so viscerally, those with class would not throw $12 beer, yet the camera then focused on none other than the brother-in-law of Senator Linda Frum, who was pointed out by the Rangers bench as being one of the individuals they wanted ejected from the game – yet he managed to talk his way out of it! Class, knowing our betters and how they would behave was on full display. But that doesn’t even touch on the actual game itself and how to read Texas pitcher Dyson’s words in response to Bautista’s bat-flip seen ’round the world. Following the game Dyson said that he wishes Bautista would, “Just kind of respect the game a little more.” How to read that outside of the context of Dyson just getting posterized by Bautista is in the idea of respect – how did Bautista disrespect the game in that moment? He didn’t. He is often characterized as a hot-tempered latino player (yes, that has long been a stereotype) and therefore in such a moment his actions are read in the context of that type and his own history, but really Bautista didn’t try to pick a fight with anyone as Dyson himself did with both Encarnation and Tulowitzski after the home run.

Some moments are just better than any Hollywood script and wouldn’t be believable if they were in a script. That Bautista come up and cranks a three run homer to give the Jays back the lead that many thought they had wrongly lost was too perfect.

The rest of the game held the intensity of that 7th inning, and on the final out there was an collective exhale from the city. No game will measure up to that for a long time. But as a final plug for why you should also devote some attention to TFC through their October please check out their answer to Bautista’s homer with Giovinco’s golazo.

Where does sport fit into the current Canadian election campaign? I throw that out there having heard much about climate change, niqabs, debt, and refugees, but nothing about sport (and little about healthcare) – there have been a few references to arts funding, but sport seems to be left out of this election entirely. So I’ll stand up a say why we should at least articulate something about it and leave it up to the parties to figure out what they believe would fit with their platforms.

To begin with I shouldn’t say that sport is completely absent from the politics of this country. The current Conservative government has made it clear that they will not contribute any funds to sports construction around the country – there have been many opportunities over the past few years – Toronto, Regina, and Quebec City have looked to the federal government for money for stadiums or arenas without success (and I’m inclined to agree that we shouldn’t be throwing massive amounts of money at huge corporations or the millionaires that hold cities for ransom with pro sports teams). The Conservatives have also brought in that tax credit for registering your kid in sports. This sounds great, hockey is not cheap, but of course this is one of those benefits where you have to spend money to get money – it disproportionately favours those that already have the means to pay for their kids sports and does nothing to improve the lot of those families that have limited means yet also want to have active kids. It also turns out that many of our great athletes that have left the country to ply their trade professionally elsewhere may have lost their right to vote, most famously Wayne Gretzky cannot vote yet endorsed Stephen Harper and the party that disenfranchised the Great One. So sport is there, but not in any way key to the debates. Sport is so absent that one of the main reasons that Mayor John Tory did not bid for the 2024 Olympics after the success of the PanAm Games was that he could not secure federal promises of support during the current campaign (so maybe we dodged one there with our extra long election campaign).

But what is new with sport? In this season of outlandish and unrealistic promises, why is there no platform for sport? Hey, promise that you’ll bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada and you’re sure to bring in a few votes, right? Go to a baseball game and show that you’ve jumped on the Blue Jays bandwagon with thousand of other voters. Actually, don’t.

Looking through the main parties platforms, only the NDP have thrown sport anything – a $28 million promise to fund sport for disadvantaged youth. Nothing from the Conservatives, Liberals, Greens, or Bloc. But sport matters. Even going back to a 2005 Conference Board of Canada report “Strengthening Canada: The Socio-Economic Benefits of Sport Participation in Canada” highlights the benefits of encouraging the entire population to be actively involved in sport. This is not just the health benefits associated with active lifestyles, but the authors also cite benefits to social cohesion, skills and the economy – buzzwords that all politicians love!

C’mon federal party leaders, hop in there and do something crazy that can snatch a headline for a day: promise a proper Challenge Cup for hockey (like the original Stanley Cup), get the CFL to work on that soccer league that is supposedly in the works, fund an infrastructure program that includes public pools, create cycling networks in major urban centres, expand and more fully fund the National Park system, there is an endless list of ways that sport can be worked into great policy for Canada, all it takes is some vision.

Tomorrow is one of the most important soccer days in the year, not for any game in the calendar, but for the release of EA Sports FIFA16 video game. While it is just a virtual game, the importance of it to many kids (and yes, adults too) is in its ability to draw fans deeper into the real game. Many discussions between the boys at my son’s soccer practices have revolved around getting the game, who they want to play as, and which version or console they have. These boys already have a strong interest in the sport, but through playing the game it creates an attachment to teams and players that they may not have developed otherwise (why does a Canadian 10 year old regularly check on the results of Exeter City [English League 2] for any other reason than he spent most of a virtual season as their leading scorer?).

Each annual iteration of the game consists of some minor tweaks to game play and controls, but the most important change (and the reason people keep buying it) is the updates of team rosters to stay current with the latest changes in the transfer market and inclusion (and subtraction) of the stars of the game. For the first time the game will include a group of playable women’s teams – not the club teams, but the national teams of many of the participants in last summer’s Women’s World Cup. When EA first announced the women’s teams that were to be included in the game, one entry – Canada – stood out; Canada would be the only country in the game where the women’s national team would be playable, but the men’s national team would not. Sigh. Granted our women are consistently ranked around 10th in the world, while our men have spent most of the last few years ranked around 100th. So somewhat belatedly, EA Sports – based in Vancouver and therefore largely a Canadian game – announced that the Canadian men’s team would be playable in FIFA16. This is great for men’s and women’s soccer in Canada, being able to win the World Cup as Canada in this game (yeah I know there are already jokes about how you’d probably have to turn the difficulty way down) gives the future players of this country a chance to dream, but it also gives them a chance to learn who currently plays for Canada. While Christine Sinclair is already familiar to many Canadians, now kids can follow the development of Cyle Larin, Ashley Lawrence, Kadeisha Buchanan, Tesho Akindele, and Jessie Fleming. If there is one thing the national teams need, it is to become that team that you want to be a part of as a fan or as a player. The women have that – just consider how they were treated throughout the WWC that Canada hosted this year, but the men have still struggled to find a strong following. The men’s team has the acute problem right now of not just needing to fill the stadium during its current World Cup qualification cycle, but needs to do so without its games having any current broadcasting deal. Despite the ratings that the women’s team brought in over the summer, the CSA and Sportsnet terminated their broadcasting deal just before Canada began its road to (hopefully?) the 2018 World Cup. FIFA16 with its ability to play as Canada helps can help to build that supporters base not just this year, but far into the future.

But not all has worked according to plan since the announcement that the Canadian Women’s team would be included in FIFA16. Last week EA was forced to announce that 13 players that were to be included were being dropped from the rosters of their national teams because they are currently players in the NCAA and their inclusion in the video game would affect their scholarships and eligibility to play on their US college teams. This affected 1 Spaniard, 6 Mexicans, and 6 Canadians – including Lawrence, Fleming, and Buchanan. Now EA made it clear that the players involved were not being paid in any way for their participation in the game (and with the thousands of men’s players the game includes there is no way they could compensate players and still make a game), yet the NCAA has held firm and insisted these women not be included in the game. What makes this so odd is that the women listed were not going to be included in the game as NCAA players – those teams aren’t part of the game anyway – the women were solely being listed as part of their national teams.

Don’t think for a moment that this is in any way about protecting the amateur eligibility of 13 women, this is entirely about the several thousand men that participate in NCAA college football and basketball. Or more precisely, protecting the NCAA and its billion dollar sports industry from having to compensate the thousands of football players and basketball players in their system. College sports is extremely lucrative, look at the success of March Madness or the BCS for how much college sports brings in through TV and advertising revenue. Yet its players receive no pay for their play. Well, okay they get scholarships and a college education for their efforts, but the NCAA as it currently functions, brings in billions in revenue for rather minuscule labour costs. It is such a successful system because for both football and basketball it is largely the only route to a professional career in the sport later on. Student-athletes (as the NCAA calls them) are trapped working on their athletic skills (and yes academic skills, but there is also a lot of controversy about that) for very little actual pay, in careers that already have limited timespans, in the hopes of becoming a pro after school. Yet players are not considered employees or workers by the NCAA. In

At least the US values its post-secondary education system (?)

fact the players of Northwestern University recently lost a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision where they attempted to claim they were workers and therefore entitled to unionize. Now belonging to a union isn’t simply about pay, it is about many other protections from abuses of employers, and the ability to work as a group of employees to make working conditions better, but consider the discrepancy between how the players and the coach of these amateur players is compensated. Players receive a generous scholarship – as long as they are athletes at the school, but this is not actual pay. Pat Fitzgerald, NWU football coach, receives a $2.48 million pay package and only ranks 39th on the list of highest paid football coaches in the NCAA. Look across the NCAA and you will find that the highest paid state employees in most of the US are football and basketball coaches – yet players are not entitled to a fraction of the revenues that they generate for their schools. That is what drives the need to prevent 13 women from being able to virtually participate for their national teams in a video game – the need to prevent football and basketball players from similar participation – or compensation.

The need to protect the NCAA from its players has affected the possibilities for another Canadian as well. Sprinter Andre De Grasse won two bronze medals at the recent IAAF World Track & Field Championships in Beijing, yet was forced to forfeit his prize earnings from the meet as it would have prevented him from keeping his eligibility status in NCAA. Again, this has little to do with De Grasse receiving his rewards as one of the world’s fastest men, and everything to do with the idea that one of the more lucrative sports might find a way to pay their athletes. And this isn’t about some ideal of amateurism in sport – fans don’t care one way or the other if athletes are paid for their efforts, consider the eyes fixed on any major sporting event such as the Super Bowl, Olympics, Champions League, World Cup, etc. – amateur or pro, people watch.

It is a shame that one big step for the representation of Canadians and of women in a video game has been derailed by the greed of an organization “protecting” their amateur athletes.

I came across an article about Islamophobia and sport from Al Jazeera the other day, and while much of what is said in there rings true of how sport leagues and specifically in an American context (yes that includes Canada) promote a certain militarized patriotic ideal, the world of sport is more complex than Khaled Beydoun presents.

Supporting troops or selling war?

Yes there are problems with how sport is used: the close links between the military and teams – as much as I support the individuals who do put on military uniforms and serve, I am very uncomfortable with the constant tributes to serving Forces members at games and cannot stand the use of camoflage versions of team uniforms. It becomes too much and yet not enough, because I’m curious what sort of support the owners would give to individual soldiers outside of their using these troops as marketing opportunity. Taken too far it becomes a pantomime that you see in WWE. I remember the WWF (as it was at the time) vilifying the Iron Sheik – perpetual badguy in the staged wrestling and his transformation into Col. Mustafa during Operation Desert Storm. His defeat by Hacksaw Jim Duggan devolved into a orgy of American jingoism on the eve of war. Good theatre, but ugly sport and racism.

Question why we sing the national anthem prior to a game for a moment. I will be going to a Canada vs Belize 2018 World Cup Qualifying match tonight and will sing the anthem of the team I am supporting tonight. The national team represents the country and so I’ll grant it here. But when it comes to a Toronto FC game, or any other city based team in a professional sporting league for that matter, why am I singing the national anthem? Toronto FC does not represent Canada, it is one of three Canadian-based MLS teams, the rosters of which contain a smattering of Canadians. I won’t even argue the Blue Jays or Raptors represent Canada as the sole Canadian teams in their respective leagues (West Coast upbringing, so I’m a Mariners fan). Why should I sing the national anthem for a game between Montreal and Toronto, both of whom are based in Canada and can claim the anthem? At that point they don’t represent the country, they represent the city. Listen to the beginning of the next Premier League game you watch, there is no God Save the Queen – not even a Rule Britannia – instead the only anthem you’ll hear is the team’s anthem (if they have one).

Beydoun is right where he speaks about how sport is politicized by leagues (North American context again), and yet at the same time we are constantly reminded that sport is not the place for politics. Hence the NFL allowing the Washington franchise to continue to use a racist epithet for its mascot, yet sanctioning players who demonstrated solidarity with #blacklivesmatter. We are told that sport is an escape, and leave the politics out, but politics cannot stay out when sport is held up as a symbol of our culture and society. North Americans view sport as passive entertainment and nothing bigger than what it is, yet for all the fans’ and media talk of the “12th man” “home field/court advantage” we have not yet acknowledged that sport creates affect that extends beyond the stadium/arena. We watch sport to feel a part of something, for a sense of belonging; now that we belong what are we going to do with it?

Compare that to football/soccer in a just about anywhere else in the world context. Sport means something – intensely. “Mes que un club” (More than a team) as FC Barcelona says. Groups form and bring politics to the sport and sport to politics because you cannot separate the two. I will admit this is not always a positive thing, you will get groups that promote racism and hatred, but they exist regardless of whether sport is involved or not. So while its easy for Beydoun to point at the monkey chants that black players face in places, I wish he had seen the other side of football supporters that is there. As the Syrian refugee crisis has worsened and thousands have made their way to Europe, only to be harassed, marked with numbers and literally walled out of different countries by governments, yet supporters at games around Europe have show solidarity with the refugees. It has even reached into the league organizations as the German Football Association (DFB) have begun a “Cross out Prejudices” campaign focused on the inclusion of refugees, and the dominant club in Germany – Bayern Munich has announced they will hold a training camp for refugees while donating 1m euros to refugee initiatives. Does this absolve sport of its wrongs? No of course not, but there is far more nuance to sport than Beydoun grants it.

Finally I feel I can resurrect this blog and keep it going again for a while. A quick explanation of why I’ve been away – most of my writing energies over the past year have been devoted elsewhere.

First, my Master’s thesis, and a related conference paper. So in October 2014 I defended the thesis titled: Global Game, Local Identities: The Social Production of Football Space in Liverpool. In it I make an argument that the city of Liverpool has come to depend on football as a means to build its economy around, and that the tourism that football generates creates different reactions in the local supporters of the game. I was very interested in the supporters trusts that I found in England and what they are looking to do with their involvement with teams, and that interest has spurred me on to continue my studies.

So the last year has been the first year of my PhD (still at York University and still in Geography). It has been a rush of courses (along with the defense), a student strike (during the frigid Toronto winter), and buying a new house (not recommended during a 1st year of a PhD – just in case you ever consider it). Now that I move into second year I am thinking that while the course burden is less, I’ll need to write something as I begin to study for my comprehensive exam sometime this winter.

The purpose of this blog may shift a bit as part of this, while before it was largely focused on the culture of football, and so is my PhD, I’d like to use this as both tool to work through the stack of papers and books for my exam, and also to place the culture of football within a wider context of sport in general. This will require some reorganization, so in the coming days/weeks I’ll be splitting the two interests into different pages here. I am very aware of how much this blog helped in my MA writing just as a place to process thoughts, but when faced with producing a thesis, it became difficult to justify the time spent writing a blog when I had something else to write.

An excellent and insightful reflection on sexism, sport and (sigh) academia. I would have liked to have attended this conference except for the inconvenience of already being at the AAG in Tampa at the same time. I like to think I would have been arguing for the women’s game, but it makes me think about my own writing and how I incorporate my own postionality in the game.

“People want excellence in sports, and the quality of women’s soccer is not there.”

“Nobody wants to watch women’s sports.”

“The top women can’t take on the top men.”

These three things were said by attendees at a recent congress of leading scholars and journalists working on soccer.

The organizers of Soccer as the Beautiful Gamedeserve a lot of credit for bringing scholars and sports writers together. What follows is not a criticism of that conference, or of its organizers – quite the opposite. At this moment, it is not possible to organize a conference at which the above statements would not be made, unless one either excluded women and women’s football from all discussion, or invited only feminists to the table. The conference’s organizers worked to make sure that feminist scholars like myself were in the room because they are committed to changing the field.

As long as people writing about the men’s game write only about men, they can maintain…

Since my last post, things in the Ukraine have shifted dramatically. Maidan is over (sort of), Yanukovich has fled, and now the country is threatened with invasion by Russia – the Crimea already has been invaded.

Geopolitics aside, this is a soccer blog, so the quick news is that in the previous round Dynamo Kyiv had their home match moved to Cyprus due to the protests in Kyiv, but all the other Ukrainian teams managed to play their home dates. Kyiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa were all knocked out of the Europa league leaving no teams left to play in Europe. With the threat of war, the Ukrainian Premier League has decided to suspend play indefinitely and has cancelled its friendly against the US – which had already been relocated to Cyprus.

But soccer does go on. One of the suspended matches was Dynamo Kyiv vs. Shakter Donetsk, with the Ultras already having purchased tickets, they decided the show must sort of go on. They managed to convince the Olympic Stadium to open for a Ultras vs Ultras match in a show of Ukranian solidarity. Remember that Donetsk is in the ethnically Russian part of Ukraine that Putin is so worried about. Check out the link above for photos of the match. (From Ultras-tifo.net)

Update – Mar. 5. So despite rumors that the Ukr – USA friendly was cancelled, it’s game on in Cyprus.